The Unicorn and the Wasp (TV story)
The Unicorn and the Wasp 'is the seventh episode of the fourth series of ''Doctor Who. It was written by Gareth Roberts, directed by Graeme Harper and featured David Tennant as the Tenth Doctor and Catherine Tate as Donna Noble. Overview To be added Synopsis The Doctor and Donna arrive at an English country estate in the 1920s and meet none other than the renowned murder mystery writer Agatha Christie. The Doctor also realises the importance of the date - it's the day when Christie famously disappeared for 10 days. They no sooner arrive than there is a murder and, in true Agatha Christie fashion, the solution to the murder and Agatha's disappearance is found in a false identity and events that occurred long ago... Plot The Doctor and Donna step out of the TARDIS into the garden of a large estate house that the Doctor deduces is in the 1920s. His theory is proved correct by the arrival of an early 20th Century motorcar driven by Professor Peach, followed by the arrival of the local church practitioner, Reverend Golightly. Greeves, the butler of the house's owner, Lady Eddison, directs Peach and Golightly to their rooms but Peach decides to go to the library first. The Doctor and Donna observe the exchange from around the corner and decide to attend with the psychic paper posing as an invitation. In the library, Peach makes a discovery, confirming a theory that he'd had when he is interrupted by an unseen figure. The figure suddenly transforms into a giant wasp and strikes Peach down with blunt piping. Outside, the Doctor and Donna, who had changed into era-appropriate attire, make their introductions at the garden party, meeting and mingling the house's residents, Lady Eddison, her husband Colonel Hugh Curbishley and their son Roger Curbishley. Other guests start arriving shortly afterward, including Robina Redmond and Golightly. Lady Eddison sends her servant Miss Chandrakala to send for Peach. The guests' revelry is peaked by the arrival of Eddison's guest of honor, none other than famed author Agatha Christie. Donna is stunned and the Doctor, recalling wanting to meet her recently is thrilled. Up in the library, Chandrakala steps inside and discovers Peach's body. Outside, the Doctor looks at a newspaper and tells Donna that the date is that of the day Agatha Christie disappears, only to turn up 10 days later at a hotel in Harrogate with no memory of the event. Suddenly, Chandrakala comes crying out, screaming about the death of Peach. Everybody heads up to the library and the Doctor, flashing his psychic paper again to convince everybody he's one of the local constabularies, examines Peach's body, sending everybody to the sitting room when he and Donna find a substance indicative of alien origin. The Doctor goes to interview the other guests with Christie about their whereabouts at the time of the murder. Golightly claims the have been unpacking in his room, Roger claims to have gone for a lone walk around the ground (when he had been having a secret rendezvous with his homosexual lover, Davenport), Redmond claims to have been getting ready for the party (when she had been reading a pistol in her purse), Colonel Hugh claims to have been reading his memoirs in his study (when in fact, he was viewing pornography and reminiscing on can-can dancers) and Lady Eddison claims to have been drinking her afternoon tea before making her way outside (when she had actually been taking a swig of alcohol from a flask concealed in her purse). Unable to discern any of their stories as truth, the Doctor recalls the piece of paper that he'd seen Christie take out of the fireplace in the library, which (in spite of an obscured first letter) clearly ready 'Maiden', though neither divine it's significance. Upstairs, Donna gets Greeves to unlock one of the bedrooms that Lady Edison had kept locked for 40 years. Looking around, she opens the curtains with a large magnifying glass in hand to reveal a giant wasp hiding behind it. The wasp smashes into the room and Donna temporarily blinds it with a reflection of the sun of the magnifying glass and runs out of the room as it drives it's stinger clean through the wooden door. The Doctor and Christie arrive and look inside; while the wasp is gone the stinger is lodged in the door. The Doctor takes a sample of the same residue they found in the library off the stinger. In the kitchen, Chandrakala makes a realisation about what may have gotten Peach killed and goes to warn Lady Eddison when something knocks a stone gargoyle overhead as she passes under it and it falls on her. The Doctor, Donna and Christie hear the thud and find Chandrakala dying outside; she manages to mutter "The poor little child" before she dies. The Doctor spots the wasp flying overhead and they chase it inside the building. Before they can catch it, however, it reverts to it's human form and they are unable to discern who it was. The other guests go downstairs and the Doctor asks if anybody understands Chandrakala's last words, but nobody speaks up. They turn to Christie for any solutions, figuring that the murders are being played out a lot like one of her narratives, but she suffers a crisis of confidence and leaves, telling them all to look to the Doctor for help. Donna finds Christie outside and tries to raise her spirits, turning the subject to her infidel husband but she starts to feel as if her books will eventually be forgotten. She then notices the disturbed flowerbed and discovers a toolkit that had been thrown from a window. The Doctor examines the tool kit inside when they are all brought drinks; he also reveals the wasp to be a Vespiform, from an examination of the residue, but can't fathom why it's behaving like one of Christie's characters. The Doctor suddenly recoils in pain, having been poisoned with cyanide in his drink. He rushes himself to the kitchen and starts requesting odd ingredients to remove the substance from his body, such as ginger beer, walnuts, anchovies and, for a shock, a kiss from Donna and the cyanide is purged from his system in a cloud of smoke. That night, the guests gather for dinner in the dining room, where the Doctor reveals that he'd slipped pepper into the soup, containing a substance used as an insecticide. The windows suddenly fly open in a gust of window and clap of thunder and the room is plunged into darkness. A buzzing is heard in the darkness and everybody panics when the wasp is seen in a flash of lightning. Everybody flees and the Doctor grabs a sword before returning inside but the wasp is gone. Redmond suddenly screams and everybody looks over at a sobbing Lady Eddison who clings to the body of Roger, face down in his soup with a knife in his back. A little while later, the guests mourn Roger while the Doctor, Donna and Christie try and make deductions. Thinking about Lady Eddison's jewel, the Firestone which was stolen in the dining room, the Doctor tries to wonder why the Vespiform is playing with them as it has the power to kill them all much quicker than it is. Christie insists that the murder is human and the Doctor comes to realise that Christie is their best hope of solving the case; in spite of her being a self-described "purveyor of nonsense", the Doctor insists that with her understanding of the human mind, if anybody can solve the case, she can. They call everybody into the sitting room and start questioning. Christie, using her deductive reasoning uncovers "Redmond" as the jewel thief known as the Unicorn, who stole the Firestone in the chaos before. She turns to Colonel Hugh (who reveals his ability to walk despite the fact that Christie had deduced nothing of the kind) and then Lady Eddison, who talks about when she returned from India with the Firestone. Remembering that Eddison had sequestered herself to the previously locked room for six months on her return and considering the piece of paper that she'd found reading 'Maiden', she deduces that Eddison had fallen pregnant in India and returned to England, hiding until the child had been born and given away to come out again. When the Doctor recalls her stating 'It can't be' in the dining room when the wasp attacked, Lady Eddison comes clean and talks about a man she'd met in India called Christopher, with whom she'd fallen in love and had an affair. He revealed to her his true self as a Vespiform to her, by which time she had gotten pregnant when he was suddenly swept away and killed in a flash flood. She returned home and gave the baby away after it's birth when Donna realises that 'Maiden' was in reference to maiden name. Christie deduces that Chandrakala came to find Edison after Peach's death, fearing that he'd discovered the truth. Christie hands the floor to the Doctor, who reasons that in Donna's point about the entire case playing out like a murder mystery, the genre of Christie's trade and, by extension, the genre of trade of Edison's favourite novelist, the killer was influenced by Christie's works all along, having all of the narrative's beamed into it's mind using the Firestone, in reality, a Vespiform telepathic recorder. Referring back to the previous Thursday, at the time Eddison was reading one of her favourite of Christie's novels, two boys broke into Golightly's church to steal from it. Lady Eddison is suddenly shocked and horrified to realise that Golightly and her firstborn, the child she gave away, are both the same age and, thus, one and the same. When Eddison absorbed the works of Christie into her mind, it was projected into his through the Firestone, which is why, when the boys broke into his church, he first transformed and presumably killed them. Exposed as the true killer, Golightly's Vespiform self starts to break through and he transforms into the wasp, attacking the others. However, Christie grabs the Firestone and lures it away, driving off in a car with the Doctor and Donna following them. Christie parks up by the side of a lake, her mind linked to that of the Vespiform; the Doctor tries to get through to it but Donna, seeing that it won't work, throws the Firestone into the lake and the wasp flies in after it and drowns, like his father. The effect of the wasp dying suddenly downs Christie, who is still connected to it by the Firestone. However, the Vespiform releases her as it dies and Christie just falls unconscious and amnesiac. The Doctor realises that this is how history occurred, the matter of her disappearance, her memory loss and her car being found at the side of a lake. They lastly travel forwards ten days in the TARDIS and deposit Christie at the Harrogate Hotel; the Doctor tells Donna that Christie continues to go on and live a great life. As they step back into the TARDIS, he wonders that she hadn't completely forgotten all of the events, her mind retaining all of what her imagination could use, like the inadvertent suggestions of her future novels Donna had made to her. Digging a chest out from under the mesh floor of the console room, the Doctor pulls out one of Christie's book which, to Donna's shock, was written in the year 5,000,000,000, meaning that Christie is never forgotten like she'd feared and is instead made the best-selling novelist of all time. Pondering on how people hope to be remembered, both travellers agree to carry onwards and take off... Cast * The Doctor - David Tennant * Donna Noble - Catherine Tate * Agatha Christie - Fenella Woolgar * Lady Eddison - Felicity Kendal * Reverend Golightly - Tom Goodman-Hill * Colonel Hugh - Christopher Benjamin * Robina Redmond - Felicity Jones * Roger Curbishley - Adam Rayner * Greeves - David Quilter * Davenport - Daniel King * Professor Peach - Ian Barritt * Miss Chandrakala - Leena Dhingra * Mrs Hart - Charlotte Eaton Crew To be added References To be added Story Notes To be added Continuity To be added Home video and audio releases To be added External Links * Official ''The Unicorn and the Wasp'' page on '''Doctor Who Website